Rajan Bhattarai

A Comprehensive Guide to Setup custom email for your brand for free!

Custom domain are easy now a days because domain names are so cheap, you can have a fancy name and fancy extension for example, yourbrandis.cool. But what about the fancy having something like mail@yourbrandis.cool? Sounds pretty cool right? Yes, this seems exactly. You can also have such email address which will look pretty good in the CV, resume or other place you use.

Custom email replaces the regular use of emails like example@gmail.com. You can personalize your own email address and spread it out. There are very few service provider that actually let you use and setup your own custom email for free. Among them is ZOHO service which i like very much because ZOHO provides a lot of features for free for personal uses. Some of them are ZOHO Mail, ZOHO Social Service, ZOHO CRM etc. These stuff are really cool. But in today’s blog we will be focusing in the ZOHO Mail which allows us to setup our own custom domain email. So without further delay, let’s start the process.

Features of ZOHO Mail:

i. Allows free setup of custom domain for custom email

ii. 5GB of data storage for single user.

iii. Up to 25 Email Accounts can be setup

iv. Single Domain per account

v. No ADS even in free plan.

vi. Limited 20 MB attachment size.

Requirements: I assume you have complete control over the DNS manager for modification of the DNS records.

Steps to create custom email address

1.Goto ZOHO Mail Sign Up and Click on get started. It will take you to the Pricing and Sign Up page. In free plan they even allow us to have custom logo and URL. Scroll down for the complete features we will be getting there.

2.Click on the SIGN Up button where we will be redirected to the org sign up page. We will be setting up our custom domain name so choose Sign up with a domain I already own.

3.Replace the above image information with your own information. The information in the above image are for demo purpose only. For eg: replace yourdomainexample.com to your domain. Fill out the respective information as your wish.

4.You need to supply your phone number to verify the account. You can also use this number to login in future as well.

5.Now it’s time to verify your domain name supplied in step 2. Once you supply the code received in your phone number, you will be taken to the following Welcome page and A message to verify the ownership of your domain name.Choose the DNS manager in the list and Select the type of process you would like to follow to verify the domain name.

There are 3 types of Verification Process

i. CNAME method

ii. TXT method

iii. HTML method.

I prefer TXT record verification because it is the fastest method while verifying the domain among the above three. For making either CNAME or TXT changes goto the DNS manager and add respective record. In my case, the TXT record were set as follows.

Note: For different person these records are different.

6.After you make all the changes, click on the Proceed to CNAME/TXT verification. You will see the following message stating your domain has been verified. Click on the Proceed to Add user.

7.Give name as per your choice and then click on create account. Now the account is ready.

We will be skipping Group Creation part because it is not necessary for now.

8.The next step is to configure Email Delivery. In this section, we will deal with configuring the MX records.

9.Add the given MX records in your DNS manager.

10.After making MX changes in the DNS manager, click on the MX Lookup. Now this is where you may get trouble. Sometimes, the record might not instantly be updated, so if you received some errors then don’t worry here. Process for next Step.

11.Next step is to configure the SPF/DKIM records. Add the SPF records in your DNS manager as TXT records while you can manage the DKIM records within ZOHO.

12.After setting up SPF/DKIM, skip all those 3 steps such as email migration, Mail client configuration and Mobile Access.

13.Email Migration helps to migrate emails from other email providers.
Mail Client Configuration means the POP and SMTP configuration process,
Mobile Access means the available ZOHO apps for smartphones such as android and Iphones.

14.After these steps,our basic setup is complete. Now you will see the following screen.
Go to the control panel which looks like this.

15.Don’t worry those records are just for sometimes appearing as if they are not correct. They need sometime to propagate and appear correct in the Control panel.

16.The next step is to CRUD operation on user. Goto USER details section and view the list. You can also add, delete the user.

17.Add the other mailbox as per your choice and you are good to go.

Congratulation, your custom email is now ready.

18.Goto ZOHO Mail Signin and login with the username and password you set up in the step 1. Now you are ready to send your first email.